By Gina Barreca/The Hartford Courant/TNS
Do you believe that “showing effort” should count more than it does, or do you think it’s a disingenuously misleading reward system undermining the character, both in school and out?
Let’s put it another way: Do you respect an individual more because he or she struggled to achieve or create something, or do you applaud more vigorously if what they do appears accomplished through an astonishing act of grace, a hidden wellspring of talent or a moment of dazzling inspiration?
To be perfectly honest, if I hadn’t been awarded points for effort, I might have never completed grade school. On our report cards, as I remember, the “E” hovered right there over the “F”: Effort was dangerously close to failure but you could keep the worlds from colliding if you tried hard enough. You could do extra-credit reports and stay after school for study groups.
My inability to complete the most basic forms of arithmetic would have kept me in fourth grade long past menopause if the principal hadn’t taken pity and permitted me to move along despite the fact that I was way behind.
I’ve only recently realised that I automatically reverse the last two digits in any string of numbers. This glitch renders me less mathematically adept, for example, than certain horses who when asked, “What’s two plus three?” can paw the ground and offer correct responses while I’m still counting on my fingers.
I passed my classes because I displayed effort, not because I learned math. But how can we help young people understand life rarely gives partial credit for effort, especially if that effort doesn’t lead to understanding or success?
Outside of school, very few people will ask you to show your work or explain how you arrived at your results: They just want to know you can do the job effectively, efficiently and without too much fuss.
Rarely in life do we actually appreciate something more fully because it took a lot of effort. Do you really want a contractor who says, “I could be a couple of years late installing your bathroom because I have a really hard time measuring stuff”? Nobody wants to hear her surgeon announce, “Boy, did I ever have trouble getting your gallbladder out! I had to get three guys to help me and they weren’t doctors, either. They were pharmacists on their way to get coffee.”
Why, then, do we like to think that somebody must suffer to produce a work of art? I recently learned from Pamela Katz’s book The Partnership that the song Mack the Knife, composed by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill for The Threepenny Opera, took less than 24 hours to write.
And in my office I have printed out, for my own benefit as well as that of my students, the following line from New York literary agent Betsy Lerner’s book The Forest for the Trees: “Your struggle to produce a piece of writing of interest and value means nothing to the reader. The reader doesn’t care what you went through to produce your work. He only cares if the piece succeeds, if it looks as if it arrived whole.”
Sometimes things can take a very long time and still not be very good. It took us all of evolutionary history just to get where we are today, for instance, and mostly where we are today is on the couch.
Let’s not pretend there’s no difference between effort and accomplishment; let’s not pretend there’s no difference between those who try hard and those who do well.
Those we respect, admire and remember bring to their work diligence, focus and an indefatigable passion for improvement. They aren’t perfectionists but they’ll reject the shoddy and the second-rate.
We should learn to take genuine pride in a job well done and not expect praise for one simply carried out.
What we need is an honest assessment of our abilities, our talents - and our limitations. And that will take some real effort.
♦ Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. She can be reached through www.ginabarreca.com
Gina Barreca
